presidential debates

Tonight I watched the Presidential Debates on ABC. The revolutionary thing about the debate is that it was closely tied with Facebook and the “US Politics” application. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying again: the Facebook Platform is a winner, and Facebook is now the #1 way for college students to socialize online. They also published “thoughts” from random people throughout the debate. One person said it was interesting that the only candidate not referred to by last name is a woman. Well, duh: her husband has already been president, and using her last name would just be confusing.

I don’t think the candidates got to see the Facebook poll results while they were debating, but it’s worth noting that the Economy was, by far, the main issue people wanted to hear more about.

One thing I found very interesting is that almost every presidential candidate cites the internet as being crucial to their success. Yet the only one who has received genuine, grassroots online support is Ron Paul. At this moment, there are 806 active users discussing him on the Ron Paul Forums. He has 37.31% support on Facebook (versus 6% in the ABC News Poll), which is far ahead of Mike Huckabee, who is in second place with 17.87%.

Most of Ron Paul’s supporters are young people and independents, which means they have never voted before or they are not registered Republicans. This means they are not included in phone polls, like the one ABC News probably did.

On Nov 5, 2007, Ron Paul supporters raised $4.3 million in a single day, and then raised over $6 million in another 1-day drive on Dec 16th (Wikipedia). That’s seriously solid proof that people like his message of freedom, non-interventionism, and sound monetary policy. He is the only politician I know of who is trying to abolish the Federal Reserve (Ron Paul on the falling value of the dollar). The above poll shows that Facebook users want to hear more about the Economy, and that’s exactly what Ron is delivering.

But I’ve written about Ron Paul before. So tonight I’m going to focus some more on Mike Huckabee. Read the rest of this entry »